Unplugged: Ghosts Of Health Care Reform Past
CBS News' Political Consultant John Dickerson spoke to several of the key players in the 1993-1994 health care reform movement on Monday's installment of "Washington Unplugged."
Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said he is not terribly worried that Congress' August recess will mean a "graveyard" for the pending legislation.
"It's always a risk," he said. Yet he noted that proponents of reform have momentum. "Three out of three committees in the House and one out of two committees in the Senate passed the legislation so they really had something going."
Daschle argued that Congress will have to "put the pieces back together" in September.
On the town hall "mob" scenes, Daschle said both parties' stand to lose. "This orchestrated effort is risky perhaps on both sides," he said.
Dickerson also spoke with Republican consultant Ed Gillespie, who, along with Dick Armey, helped derail the Clintons' reform effort.
"There are two opportunities for Republicans in this debate," Gillespie said. "One is to stop something bad from happening and two is to be part of something good happening."
He said that Republicans should not misconstrue dissention from the president's plan as satisfaction with the status quo.
"I actually do not think there is any peril in opposing the president's plan at the moment," Gillespie said. "The Democrats have the numbers in House and the Senate…they have essentially rejected a bi-partisan approach…that is their prerogative. And it's the perogative for Republicans to stand up and say, 'we are going to stop that.'"
Stan Greenberg, former President Bill Clinton's chief pollster, said Obama's initiative "is going well in terms of a legislative process" compared to the early 1990s approach. "With Bill Clinton it was a disaster," he said.
"We never got to this point," he added.
Watch the interviews above, as well as archival video from the mother of all health care town hall protests and an interview with Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on her new book.